Regional Hits of 1982

The standard page for 1982 lists the biggest hit songs across the
whole World. This page compares that with the top 20 biggest hits of the year in
North America and Europe. The region index
explains how these results were generated and
the long term trends.

Biggest U.S. hit of 1982 was "Eye of The Tiger" by Survivor. Number one for most weeks, most weeks in the chart and best selling. More than "I Love
Rock'n'Roll".

As we've said elsewhere the listing here also reflects success over
the intervening years. So having the most contemporary success
does not guarantee that the song will be the top in the North American
chart. Also note that the chart here is "North American" NOT U.S., and
while success in Canada does not often tip the balance, the US market being
so much larger than the Canadian one, it might make a difference.

We could take your comment two different ways, first as a suggestion that
we "fix" this particular chart, or secondly as a suggestion that we look again
at the metric we are using.

The first is, of course, impossible. The way this site is set up ensures that
all listings are generated with no manual input at all. Once the metric is set
no one, not even the administrators, can "fix" positions in individual
charts. This is both because there is so much data here that adjusting every
page would be impossible, and secondly because we don't trust even ourselves to
be objective about which artists, albums and songs are boosted.

Our suspicion is that you are aware of that and that your proposal would be for us to
look again at the metric we are using, because in this particular case it is delivering
an apparently incorrect result.

So which song has had more success? As you say "Eye of The Tiger" did better in the
Billboard chart, was nominated for Oscar and Golden Globe, and was number 1 in Canada.
But "I Love Rock 'n' Roll" was number 1 in Canada for longer, was a bigger hit according to
Record World, WABC New York, and the Billboard Annual listing, and was in the RIAA's important
songs list and the "Acclaimed Songs" list.

So we agree, it is possible that "Eye of the Tiger" was more successful. But we'd
claim that it is also arguable that "I Love Rock 'n' Roll" deserves its higher position.

Of course one issue is that ANY automated metric is bound to throw
up some borderline cases, and clearly this is one. We want a way of combining charts
that is both simple and yields defensible results. For us the simplicity is the most important
aspect, because we want results that are transparent, so that users can see
why certain songs or albums come higher up the list.

We continue to try and refine our metric, and your input will help us with that
process. But at the moment we're content to continue using the current algorithm
until we can find a better one. If you have any suggestions as to how we could
improve the algorithm we'd like to hear them.